Aquarium Care

Changing your aquarium water is something to do on a weekly basis. Wait wait wait don’t go running for the bucket and hose! Changing the water in your aquarium incorrectly can do some serious damage to your aquarium. Let me run you through the proper way of replacing aquarium water.

Ideally you should change up to %25 of the water weekly.

Why only 25%?

Well because your fish have grown used to their current water. That perfect mix of chemicals, that specific temperature, even that perfect amount of waste. Changing too much water will throw your fish out of whack causing them to stress out. And we definitely don’t want that! Be sure to add the appropriate water conditioners when adding the new water!

Hey while the water is low, now is a good time to clean the sides of the aquarium, change the filter media and pads.

Cleaning the sides:

I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to use proper cleaning supplies. Using 99% of household sponges or cleaning supplies WILL KILL YOUR FISH. Instead take the trip to the pet store or aquarium to get proper cleaning supplies such as sponges or scrapers.

For those that don’t like to get wet, you can buy these nifty magnetic sponges that will let you clean the inside walls of the tank without even touching the water. Keep in mind that these don’t work quite as well as the standard aquarium sponge.

The Gravel:

This step tends to be most people’s least favorite aquarium maintenance. There are basic gravel vacuum systems that work well for tanks smaller than 10 gallons and no more in my opinion. These require buckets, human started suction and usually end in a huge mess all over your floor. These are very messy!

If you’re serious about your aquarium I HIGHLY recommend you get a self-starting gravel vacuum system, you’ll save your self a lot of time and trouble.

What you do with these gravel vacuums is you push the open end under the gravel and the suction will pull the waste right out of the gravel without sucking up much gravel.

Final Points:

Its very important that you keep your aquarium clean. Once things start going downhill its usually very hard to make things better again, don’t be lazy and let your tank get dirty.

Keep the fish in the tank through the cleaning process. You’ll put more stress on your fish if you remove them than you would if you just left them in the tank.